


To sleep, perchance to dream

by Sunshine170



Category: Fringe
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-05
Updated: 2013-10-05
Packaged: 2017-12-28 12:38:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/992099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sunshine170/pseuds/Sunshine170
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The day Walter disappears, Etta has the first nightmare.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To sleep, perchance to dream

 

The tech is not the reason he can't get any sleep.

He doesn't sleep anymore because every time he closes his eyes, he dreams of her.

He always finds himself in the same place. A beautiful meadow by a lake, and he sees her there, his little girl, amidst a field of wild flowers, in a white dress, her blond hair loose, strands flying in the light breeze.

The sky is bluer in his dream, and so are her eyes, as she looks at him from a distance, clutching a dandelion with one hand and reaching out to him with another, beckoning him with a smile that was innocent and impish at the same time.

She's always so close but he can never reach her, every time he holds out his hand to clasp her own chubby outstretched palm, she disappears.

And just like that he finds himself back in the warehouse.

Except it's not the young woman but his three year old daughter he sees there, lying there with that horrible slackness in her body, her white dress bloody and her eyes open… lifeless.

He screams in desperation, but there's no sound. He pulls her into his arms and shakes her again and again, calling out her name, urging her to wake up.

There's always so much blood and it's all over his hands, and he wakes up gasping in horror, stumbling his way to the bathroom as the bile rises upwards his throat and he throws up, till his trachea burns from the acid and there's nothing left in his system as he heaves dryly.

He scrubs his palms with soap under scalding hot water till they bleed, but he can't stop seeing the splotches of blood.

 

* * *

 

Some days, he simply watches from a distance, thinking if he lied to himself enough, then he could believe it's true.

"It's beautiful here isn't it?" He hears a soft voice speak up and he finds her sitting next to her. She smiles at him, her grin slightly crooked, eyes reflecting the sky.

He forgets really… how much of him was half of her.

But he doesn't want her here, not this Etta. Not the one who died and left him to live in this unforgiving world.

"You're not real." He shakes his head turning his gaze back to the little girl playing at a distance.

She looks so happy, he thinks.

"Is any of this real?" She shrugs, before looking at him with a curious expression. "Does it matter if I am real?"

"No… I guess it doesn't." He shakes his hand, still refusing to meet her gaze. "But you don't belong here."

"You're angry with me?" She says in an amused tone.

"You left us." He says simply, turning to look at her then. "You left me."

"I could never leave you." She gives him a sad smile. "You know that."

"He took you from me…I lost you."

"No, you didn't lose me." She shakes her head. "Not yet at least. But you'll lose me if you forget."

"Forget what?"

"What makes you human." She says simply.

He doesn't say anything, going back to watch the little girl playing.

If he doesn't try to reach for her, she doesn't go away and this way he can still see her at least.

"I am doing this for you, you know." He says after a few moments have passed.

Not that time has any real meaning in this place.

"Is that what you tell yourself?" She looks at him with a knowing smile.

"I have to do this, it's the only way. I can't beat them without doing this. You have to understand that." His voice is firm, like he was trying to convince himself.

"See that girl over there. She thinks the world of you. You're her hero, the one who makes everything better. You never needed to be anything except her father for her to believe in you."

"I let you die. So much for a hero." He shrugs.

"You were not responsible for what happened."

"Is that what I should tell myself?" He gives her a humorless smile but she doesn't smile back.

She looks worried, concerned, eyes rife with a pain that no one so young should ever know.

God…she looks like Olivia…

"Don't you see?" There's a quiet desperation in her voice. "I don't want to leave you. But you won't be able to hold onto me for much longer if you don't turn back from here."

"I can't…" He shakes his head.

"Dad… please."

"Don't call me that." He's sharp, curt even. "You're not real and you don't get to call me that."

"Dad please…you have to stop. There's another way."

"No there isn't… I am doing this for you." He repeats, the cadence of his voice turning flat, almost robotic.

She shakes her head unhappily, holding out her hand to his cheek, like she had done in the warehouse before she had died.

Her touch is barely there, and yet it feels incredibly real. More real than anything Peter has felt in days.

"You have to hold onto me…I am the part of you that you have to hold onto. Or else…" She smiles, an immeasurable sadness in her expression.

He gasps, waking up.

He doesn't go back to sleep again.

* * *

The day Walter disappears, Etta has the first nightmare.

Like most things with her daughter, Olivia knows something is wrong even before that.

Something hasn't been right the whole day. Something she's been trying to ignore with little success. That disquieting feeling she has carried home with her from the park that stayed with her

Peter was at the lab, having rushed there after receiving the strange letter from Walter, while she had stayed with Etta at home. She has been strangely reluctant to let her child out of her sight since they'd gotten back and even after Peter had called her with the news that Walter was nowhere to be found, she couldn't find it in herself to rush to the lab like she would have any other day.

Etta was for most part well-adjusted to their erratic work schedules by now and was generally a very independent child. But she had been unusually clingy today, unwilling to be separated from Olivia for even just a little bit. If she hadn't been busy playing in her bath, Olivia doesn't think she would have never let Peter leave the house without throwing a major tantrum. She'd seen how genuinely upset Etta had gotten to learn of his absence, demanding that her mother call him and ask him to come home immediately.

It had taken a lot of persuasion but she had finally gotten her to sleep, on the condition of course, that Etta be allowed to sleep in their bed instead of in her own room.

Worried as she had been about her odd behavior, Olivia hadn't thought much about it, too concerned about Walter. She waits by the phone anxiously for Peter's calls, trying to help him in whatever way she can, hating herself for not going to him, when it sounds like he clearly needed her.

But something tells her… she needs to be here.

It a little over 2:00 when next to her, Etta starts fidgeting agitatedly in her sleep, moaning softly.

She immediately lays a hand over her forehead like she did when Etta had trouble sleeping, in an attempt to soothe her daughter, but it doesn't work and within seconds her distress seems to escalate.

"Mommy…" She calls out in a helpless…almost broken way. "Mommy no…"

"Sweetheart, it's okay." Olivia whispers, running a hand through her hair, as she gently tries to nudge her awake. "I am right here."

"Mommy... noooo..." This time she screams.

Olivia panics, shaking her harder now to get her to wake up, as she begins to scream louder and louder, calling for Peter now.

"Etta, honey, please wake up. You're having a bad dream." She gathers her daughter in her arms, aware of the fact that she was shaking violently in her embrace.

As if in a daze, Etta's eyes open, unfocussed, moving erratically before they settle on her mother's face.

She stares silently for a second, and then bursts into a fit of uncontrollable tears.

* * *

About five minutes after, Olivia picks up the phone and calls Peter.

"I need you to come home." She says without preamble.

"Olivia…I am trying to…"

"Peter now." She says firmly, leaving no room for negotiation, her voice betraying only the slightest tremble that was racking her entire body.

"Sshh baby. It's okay. Daddy will be here soon." She turns then to her daughter, stroking her hair gently as Etta continues to cry relentlessly.

"Daddy will be here very soon." She says desperately.

The moment she realized Peter was not here, Etta had completely lost it, babbling incoherently. She had cried even harder, if it were possible, demanding to see him right then and nothing Olivia would say seemed to register in her mind at all. She had then wriggled out of her grasp and run blindly around the house, calling for him, and to Olivia's horror then tripped and fallen over the last couple of stairs in her disoriented frenzy to get downstairs, landing on the floor in a crumpled heap. With her momentum broken, she then simply stayed still, sobbing in the most devastating way.

With her heart in her mouth, Olivia had made her way down the stairs as fast as she could, taking her daughter into her arms, swiftly checking for any injury, before carrying her over to the living room couch. After having bundled her securely in a throw blanket, and holding her extra tight just in case she tried to run away again she reached for the phone, scared out of her mind at this point, knowing instinctively that Peter needed to be here.

The twelve minutes she knows it takes to get from the lab to their home feels longer than usual, as she paces in the living room around anxiously with her daughter in her arms, making more attempts to calm her down, none of which seemed to be working.

She nearly feels lightheaded with relief when Peter finally walks in through the front door. In those wordless moments of communication they have become so adept at over the years, he follows her gaze to the nearly hysterical child she was holding, his eyes widening at the sight.

"What happened?" He looks at her with a shocked expression, as he hurries over to where she was. Hearing the sound of her father's voice, Etta turns to look at him them, looking relieved and distraught at the same time to see him, before launching herself at him with so much force, that Peter almost loses his balance.

He shares a rather frazzled look with Olivia before turning his attention back to the inconsolable little girl who had climbed into his arms by now.

"Hey what's wrong kiddo? What's the matter huh?' Peter says gently, letting her hold onto him as tightly as she wished, disregarding the way her knees were jabbing rather painfully into his stomach.

"Daddy…" Etta sniffles putting her arms around him so tightly, that Peter could feel her little finger nails digging into the flesh at his nape. She was holding him to the point of constriction. "I got lost. I got lost and you were gone. You were gone daddy. You left me." She repeats, almost in an accusing, angry voice. There is a helpless frustration in her body movements as she brings her hands to his chest, hitting him with curled up fists that did little to hurt him, before clinging to him once again like her life depended on it.

"I didn't go anywhere. You're not lost honey." Peter says soothingly, meeting Olivia's confused and worried expression. "You're at home… see…with us. We're right here." He tries to pry away her face which was burrowed into his chest tightly, trying to see her, but she doesn't let go, simply bursting into new tears.

"I got lost daddy…"

"Sweetheart, it's okay." He whispers, rubbing soothing circles on her back, as she literally shakes in his embrace, finding it extremely difficult to bear her distress. "You're safe now."

"You're safe now." He tells her again and again for a little over half an hour, till her sobs subside and she finally succumbs to exhaustion and falls asleep in his arms, her hold never once loosening up.

"What was that about?" Peter looks at Olivia with a perplexed expression after they go upstairs and he settles her back in bed.

She shakes her head, wiping away the wet tracts on her daughter's now puffy red cheeks, reaching for a tissue from the nightstand to clean up her nose. She then presses a kiss to her forehead grimacing as she feels the unhealthy warmth of her skin.

"I have no idea." Olivia whispers shakily, wondering what could possibly have caused Etta so much grief. "She just started screaming in her sleep and she kept calling for you and she was just…God Peter, she was in so much pain and shock. I didn't know what to do."

"She must have had an awful nightmare." He says grimly, putting a hand on her shoulder, realizing only then just how unnerved Olivia was, focused as he has been on taking care of Etta.

"It's fine Liv. It's over now." He tells her in a reassuring voice.

Olivia doesn't believe him.

* * *

Etta has strange dreams.

Not that most people don't. Dreams are rarely sensible.

But her dreams are strange because they feel real.

She dreams of a park all the time, of standing in the middle of utter chaos, all of three years old while a building behind her disappears.

In her dream, she waits, frozen and scared for her father to come get her, her mother running towards them, before a startling white light blinds her and she finds herself standing alone in the park.

At first there are only images…

The skies are greyer in those, the sun never out. A bleaker, darker Boston, almost in ruins. Their home looted, abandoned, her nursery in shambles… her parents' bedroom ransacked, a bullet in a matchbox.

She dreams a lot about being alone. A home that's not hers, but one that feels familiar, like she's lived there before. A couple whom she doesn't recognize but who feel like family.

Her parents are never there.

More than anything… she feels their absence viscerally. It's a horrible feeling, like a void in her heart that won't close.

As a little girl, for a long time, anytime she had one of the dreams, she would jolt awake in the middle of the night, with a burning need to see them, to be near them.

To not be alone…

Tossing aside her blankets, she'd run to their room and climb into their bed without a second thought and curl up against her mother

Her mother would put a snug arm around her and pull her trembling form close to her chest, giving her a understanding smile and a look…like she just knew the feeling that was racking her body in that overwhelming urge to be close to her.

"It's okay baby… it's just a bad dream. You're okay now." She would whisper kissing her forehead. Etta would simply nod and take her still sleeping father's hand (he was always better at sleeping through disruptions than her mother), clasping it firmly with both her tiny palms, holding onto it for dear life. She would tuck it under her chin and close her eyes tight, breathing in slowly, inhaling the comforting intermingled scents of her parents, feeling warm and secure between them. She would gradually feel her fear leave her and give into sleep again.

She would get unusually clingy in the mornings that followed these episodes, anxious somehow to have her parents in her sight always, spending most of the day subdued and quiet, usually in her father's arms or on his lap. His touch was the most reassuring thing in the world to Etta. It could sooth her in an instant… like it did for her mother.

Her parents seemed to understand this inexplicable apprehension, because they always found ways to reassure her with hugs that longer and tighter, and more kisses than usual.

Now that she's older, she doesn't rush to their room anymore and bury her head under the covers. But sometimes, she'll sneak in and just watch them sleeping, for a minute or two.

It's almost like she needs to see them to convince herself they were right there. That the world of her dreams hadn't come true and she hadn't woken up to find them gone.

Her dad had sat her down once and taught her to condition herself against remembering her dreams so that she didn't feel like there was a black cloud hanging over her all day whenever she had those particular dreams, but it hadn't helped yet.

_Please don't dream tonight…please don't dream tonight…_

She tells herself sternly every night for years.

She's twenty four when she's finally able to forget.

 

 


End file.
